Thanks to February storms, state officials are slightly easing drought restrictions on water deliveries, but the changes won't make a difference to most of the state. The prime beneficiaries will be Central Valley irrigation districts with the most senior water rights. Although last month's above average rainfall in Northern California improved the water supply picture somewhat, officials Tuesday continued to predict that the big state and federal water projects that help supply a majority of Californians will deliver little or no water to most agricultural and urban agencies this year.

Thomas Cox, a third-generation Imperial Valley farmer, is driving his pickup along the gravel roads that separate large fields of lettuce, broccoli, onions and wheat. The discussion turns, as it often does in the Imperial Valley, to water. "Without water," said Cox, 27, "our ground would be useless. " But with copious amounts of water, the Cox family and others have turned half a million acres of desert into one of the most bountiful farming regions in the world -- a fact unchanged by the drought gripping much of California.

March 17, 2014 | By Ari Bloomekatz, Rong-Gong Lin II and Matt Stevens, This post had been corrected. See note below for details

Seismologists say Monday's magnitude 4.4 temblor near Westwood could mark the beginning of the end for L.A.'s years-long "earthquake drought. " Typically, they would expect a 4.4-sized earthquake about once a year in the Los Angeles Basin, but that hasn't happened for years. “We don't know if this is the end of the earthquake drought we've had over the last few years, and we won't know for many months,” said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson. FORESHOCK? What the odds are The magnitude 4.4 earthquake that struck near Westwood at 6:25 a.m. is the most significant shake in Southern California since a 5.5 earthquake hit Chino Hills in 2008.

Saudi Arabian Airline is scheduled to begin new service from Los Angeles International Airport to Saudi Arabia later this month, an occasion that is customarily celebrated with an elaborate ceremony on the tarmac and in the terminal. For example, when Emirates Airline debuted in December daily service between LAX and Dubai, the airlines taxied the A380 plane to the gate under a shower of water from the airport fire trucks' water cannons. But with California in its worst drought in modern times, LAX officials told Saudi Arabian Airline that they'll have to make do without the water cannons for the celebration of the new service.

If you're a city person, you might only have read of chamber pots, an inconvenient though useful contraption from an earlier time. In the part of Texas where I grew up, the term "chamber pot" was a tad too genteel. We called these essentials "slop jars" or just "the pot. " Whatever you called it, I had to empty it. Our house sat on a slight rise facing busy Highway 31. The outhouse was back of the house, toward the woods, maybe 50 feet away. PHOTOS: 5 Senate women to watch in 2014 It was tricky running with the pot to the outhouse.

California's parched winter brought a big surge in air pollution, pushing the number of bad air days one-third higher than the previous winter and posing a serious health threat, state air quality officials said Tuesday. Levels of haze-forming soot typically increase in winter, but this year was worse because of the persistent lack of rainfall, low winds and unusually stagnant conditions that trapped pollution close to the ground. Karen Magliano, an assistant division chief at the California Air Resources Board, said the increase in dirty air was a weather-driven exception to a decade-long trend of improvement.

The storms that slammed Southern California dumped much needed rain, but experts said they did little to ease the drought conditions. "This is no drought-buster, but it's a nice, fat down payment" in the water bank, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. Patzert said the latest storm, the largest since December 2010, helped put an end to an unusually long wildfire season and to ease the three-year drought conditions plaguing the state.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Saturday to free up the state's water supplies and aid residents who face hardship because of the drought, according to a release from his office. More than $687 million will go to drought relief, money that will fund housing and food for workers directly affected by the drought and projects aimed at more efficiently capturing water, the release said. “Legislators across the aisle have now voted to help hard-pressed communities that face water shortages,” Brown said in a statement.

SACRAMENTO -- A $687.4-million emergency drought relief package is on its way to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk after easily clearing the Legislature on Thursday. Brown and legislative leaders last week unveiled the proposal , which would free up the state's water supplies and provide assistance to residents who face economic hardship due to the drought. "Today we provide significant relief," state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said in a floor speech. "This is a lot of money and will help thousands of California families dealing with the drought.

SACRAMENTO - A $687.4-million emergency drought relief package is on its way to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk after easily clearing the Legislature on Thursday. Brown and legislative leaders unveiled the proposal last week to free up the state's water supplies and aid residents who face hardship due to the drought. "Today we provide significant relief," state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said in a floor speech. "This is a lot of money and will help thousands of California families dealing with the drought.